Our Florida Vacation - Part 4 (The Last One)

We slept in until 8 and got to Epcot by 10. It was looking cloudy and rain was predicted, but we hoped that it wouldn’t actually rain. Or that it would be a quick rainstorm. We also tried to figure out what we were going to do at Epcot. Some of us wanted to focus on rides, and some wanted to concentrate on going to the different country pavilions and do shopping, etc. I thought that maybe we could do some of both and everybody would be happy. This was not exactly what happened.

The kids at the front of Epcot

We went on Spaceship Earth and then we went to the Character Spot. This character greeting was also very organized and I appreciated that you could see 5 characters in one spot. After we met Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Pluto and Goofy, we went shopping and had some pastries in the United Kingdom.

The kids and Mickey

The kids and Pluto

The kids and Minnie

The kids and Donald

The kids being goofy by Goofy

Some cute holiday topiaries

We had a visitor with us at lunch

Super visiting the phonebooth in
the United Kingdom

Flower with Paddington Bear.
When she was a baby, her nursery
was decorated with Paddington Bear things.

By this time, it was our FastPass Time for TestTrack. This was the one ride we got a FastPass for at Epcot, but if I was to do it again, I would have waited in line for this ride (wait times were usually about 30-45 minutes) and got a FastPass for Soarin. Anyway, on Test Track, most of the ride is inside where you “test” certain things in your “car” and then you go outside on a track as your “car” races at 60 mph. The car is open on top. So we are doing all the tests inside and our car turns and races outside – where we are all hit with raindrops! While we were inside waiting to get on, the rain had started.

We were going to go to some of the Pavilions, so we headed over to Mexico, but it was raining pretty hard, so we stopped and got some nachos. When it slowed down some, we started walking again. We decided to see if the rain was shortening the wait time at Soarin, so we walked across the park, only to discover that Soarin was an indoor ride, and the waiting was all done inside, so the rain was actually increasing the time, so we headed back to Norway, and waited in line for the Maelstrom water ride, but after waiting in line for 10 minutes, they shut down the ride (we seemed to have a knack this trip!). But since we weren’t actually on the ride, we didn’t get a FastPass or anything. By this time, two or so hours later, it had stopped raining. We went to China, Germany, and then were actually part of the street show in Italy. It was getting dark by now, so we walked quickly through Morocco, France, United States, and Canada, but we stopped to check out more of the shops in United Kingdom. Then we went to Mouse Gear, one of the biggest Disney stores at Walt Disney World, and bought some souvenirs.

Trying on a sombrero in Mexico

Pretending to be scared of a
dragon in China

Checking out one of their
Viking"relatives" - Their maternal
grandpa is Danish

On the steps in Italy

Doing a jig in the United Kingdom

Jelly Bean trying on knight gear
in the United Kingdom

Everybody was tired and cranky. We had gotten wet in the rain. Nobody really got what they wanted from that day either because we didn’t get to go on that many rides OR see that many of the country pavilions.

And our flight was at 7 AM the next morning. This meant getting up at 3:30 and being at the airport by 5 AM.

We got home and had dinner and spent one last night in the pool before packing to go home.

We got on the plane the next morning and were in Chicago by 10:30 am. We stopped to get some lunch, and then home. I got in bed around 2 pm and I didn’t wake up until the next morning.

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All in all, it was a GREAT trip. We had a very, very good time. There were a few things that I would have changed about the things we did at the park, and I would have loved to have had a down day in the middle to just hang out in the pool. I also was kind of “rided” out by the 5th day. It would have been nice to go to Sea World or Cape Canaveral or to the beaches or something completely different on one day.

But it was WONDERFUL to be on vacation for a whole week, and it was so nice to be someplace warm in late November!